What's In a Name?
by Kireina-Ame
Summary: What is in a name? Is it merely a scribble of lines and curves? A word or phrase we make a connection to? A part of our identity? And what does it mean when yours means nothing? Mild IchiRuki/Post-SS Arc


**Disclaimer:** It's still not mine. I swear there would be fluff for all if I could just _borrow_ it for a bit though!

Please REVIEW after reading! (Oh and my notes are at the bottom of the story, hint hint.)

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><p><em><strong>What's in a Name?<strong>_

It was another relaxing Sunday morning. The sun was shining its cheerful rays through the window in beams, bringing with it the warmth and light breeze from the partial opening. The birds were chirping merrily, the smell of fruit fresh from Yuzu's breakfast filled the air, and there were punctuations of small giggles in pure delight coming from the open closet.

And Ichigo could hardly stand it! He would enjoy a few quick moments of the house's serene silence before yet another giggle would erupt and shatter his peace. He wasn't even sure what would otherwise be such a happy sound was bothering him so much. He figured she was doing it on purpose. After all, Rukia did so enjoy pissing him off. He gripped the book tighter that he was trying in vain to read while lounging on his perfectly made bed. What he figured the midget shinigami was doing was trying to pester him just enough for him to crack and go crazy. And considering it had been going on for approximately 10 minutes, since he had brought in the fruit platter for breakfast for her to eat, she might actually succeed.

Silence.

Giggle.

_Slurp_.

He swore that he could feel the blood vessels in his head throbbing. He hadn't turned the page or read a single word past the first line at the top the entire time. Why couldn't she eat the fruit faster? What was _so damn amusing _about it? Why did she insist on sitting happily in _his_ frickin' _closet_ instead of somewhere else doing, well, _something else_!

Silence.

Eh? Did it finally end? Could he now read past page three and actually absorb some of the plot of… of… Well, it didn't matter which damn book he was reading anyway!

Giggle.

_Slurp_.

"AAAGH! What the hell are you laughing about?" Ok, so his patience officially ran out and his 'cool' was long gone. He just couldn't handle it anymore. He even threw the damn mystery book onto the floor, cutting off her irritating pattern.

"Nothing," she replied. She was obviously lying. And she knew he knew. She knew he knew she knew! Ugh! Why was she so irritating? And then, she did it again. She frickin' did it again.

Giggle.

This time he stormed upright and across the room to glare at her heatedly as she sat perfectly happy in seiza on the futon in his closet. "The hell, Rukia! What is so damn _funny_?" How is it that she makes me feel like the crazy one here?

Blinking up at him with those big, beautiful, but laughably innocent-looking, indigo eyes she graced him with an amused smile that stretched further across her face than usual. It didn't even hold a glimpse of anything sinister or mischievous. It was simply a happy and joyful grin that went completely unaffected by her roommate's obvious ill demeanor. It almost ruined his bad mood. Almost.

"Ichigo!" the young girl simply replied, popping another piece of fruit in her mouth as she slowly devoured it. He blinked once, confused. But before his lost all semblance of anger he was able to figure out what she meant. The fruit she just slurped up was a strawberry. Ichigo = strawberry. In her annoying midget way, she was laughing at _him_.

"You're just _trying_ to annoying me, aren't you?" Maybe a bit of a stupid question but it fell out of his mouth before he could stop it. He leaned against the closet's frame, partially inside the space, to glare at her.

"Trying to annoy you?" she dared outloud in her most normal of voices. He wasn't an idiot and she knew that much. But he had to admit that maybe she wasn't such a bad actress. Her head tilted just the slightest to the side, her tongue seeking the little bit of juice left on her upper lip, her eyes full of mirth.

"Yes! Trying to annoy me!" He gripped the side of the closet door as he leaned in further, his nose almost meeting hers. His light brown eyes narrowed into threatening slits and his scowl on maximum power. But she did not wither beneath the heated glare. Not a single bit.

"No, I'm not." She sounded so damn sure of herself, almost to the point of doubting his sanity for thinking otherwise. He could tell that from the delicate eyebrow that raised over one of her eyes.

"Then what, _exactly_, are you trying to do?" Though he had not a single doubt of her intent – she was definitely in 'pester Ichigo to the brink of a heart attack' mode – he was curious as to what the hell she _thought_ she was doing instead.

"Oh, you misunderstand. I'm not _trying_ to do anything." The look on her face was almost believable. It was the same look she used when she was lecturing him after a Hollow battle that she was convinced he could have done better. It went from being 'ha ha, you're such an idiot' to 'damn, you really are an idiot'. "Because I'm succeeding."

Dare he? Oh, he dared. "In…?"

"Annoying you."

_Aaaand_ it was back. That damn amused smirk on _her_ face and that throbbing vein on _his_, all in response to her merriment. He just couldn't take it! He was losing his mind and she was sitting there, calm and happy as ever. "AAARGH!" He grabbed his orange mane in both hands and stomped back over to his bed. Plopping down on the now crumpled sheet, he glared over to the raven-haired heiress perched in his closet.

"Oh, stop." And she actually rolled her eyes at him! He completely missed her fingers slipping back into the little bowl held in her other hand, fishing for another piece of fruit. That is, he ignored the movement until her juice-covered fingers pulled something out of it and flicked it over towards his face. "Have a strawberry!" It bounced off his chin – which made it a great shot, actually – and then onto the floor at his feet.

"Oi! Stop throwing food! I have to clean up after you!" He grabbed the offending fruit from the floor and tossed it into the wastebasket next to his desk, knowing he'd have to wipe that spot later before the sugary juice ruined the floor.

"Not if your reaction time were better." Shrugging, she licked her lips once more and picked up another piece to chew pensively on it.

"_You_ are _so_ damn annoying! Aren't there any Hollows for you to be slaying right now?" He ran one calloused hand down his face, letting out a breath as if it would clear him of his tenseness.

"Nope!" _Slurp_.

Silence.

He was waiting for it, anticipating it, almost dreading it. It wasn't that he hated the sound. In fact, he thought her giggles could be downright adorable, though like hell you'd ever hear him say that, and they were far too rare for the normally somber young woman. It was that he couldn't stand her being so damn entertained _at him_. But the sound never came. And when he had almost given up he heard instead her voice breezing over him.

"Why are you named after a fruit?" Rukia actually sounded serious about her ridiculous question. He glanced up at her as she studied a strawberry, held delicately in her pointer and thumb. Ichigo immediately wish he hadn't as he watched her slowly consume it between pouting, juice-covered, pink lips.

But then her question brought him back. "What?"

"I mean, really? A fruit? And a sweet, girly one at that."

Ok, back to being annoyed and hating her. He was back to be being able to ignore the way she was eating her breakfast. "I am not named after a fruit."

"But 'ichigo' is-," Her large, violet-tinged sapphire eyed blinked at him like he had just suggested that they go to a hoedown with a Hollow.

"My name means 'one who protects'." He would have thrown his words at her if she didn't look so honestly intrigued. At least he was able to keep his scowl on.

"Eh?"

Ichigo rolled his eyes and left his bed, pulling a pen and notepad out of his desk drawer. He quickly scrawled the two kanji symbols that made up his given name and walked the paper over to his resident shinigami partner. She took the paper in both of her hands, giving his face a quick glance of curiosity before giving the kanji her full attention. Though they had known each other for quite some time now and she even semi-attended his high school alongside him, she never really thought about what characters made up the name of the young man that seemed to change her world.

She found herself smiling gently at his neat but masculine penmanship and then in the kanji themselves. The first one was the signal dash meaning "one" – _ichi_. The second was the more complex character for "protector" or "guardian" – _go_. Nary a fruit in sight.

"So it does…" she whispered, more to herself. It was perfectly Kurosaki Ichigo, the orange-haired _ryoka_ that blurred the lines in her heart between wrong and right and literally came crashing into her life to rescue her. It was a perfect name. Not that she'd tell him that.

The smile she graced him with, for some strange reason, made his face heat up every so gently. The discomfort he felt at the shyness she so easily caused forced him to pull his eyes away from hers as he stuttered out the first thing on his mind to distract. "What about you?"

"Hm?" Her own little bubble of thought was popped at his question. She set the paper down at her side near her nearly empty fruit bowl and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Your name. What does it mean?" He rubbed the back of his neck as he bravely glanced back down.

"No idea." With a single, subtle shrug she was back to finishing her breakfast.

His face fell as he nearly stepped back at the abruptness and disinterest in her voice. "W-what? How do you not know?"

"No one ever told me." The words were vulnerable but her tone was not. He was pretty sure he was stumbling into dangerous territory here. He could end up hurting her feelings or getting his ass handed to him. Most likely both. But, as history as shown with his personality anyway, he pushed on.

First, he knew she didn't write her name in a kanji so it wasn't as easy a task to figure out what her given name stood for. But simply because she signed in _katakana_ didn't mean that it didn't mean something, somewhere.

"What language does it come from?"

"…Haven't the faintest." Though Rukia had to admit that it was an interesting prospect he proposed to her. She herself never considered that it could be some foreign language that inspired her name. She merely assumed it was an order of sounds that some random person, family or not, put together to simply have something to refer to her as. She couldn't remember a time without her name but she honestly couldn't remember really having anyone around to call say it before Renji and the gang. She just kind of carried it with her from some unknown time or place.

His caution was lost underneath his determination and interest. He studied her face as if he were inspecting for the answer written in her skin, her eyes, her hair. She was a walking mystery, even after everything they've been through. "Is… this the name you had when you were in the Living World?" He completely and totally refused to say 'when you were alive' because he outright rejected the idea to think of Rukia as 'dead'. Her name and _that_ word would never be uttered together as long as he could help it.

"Yet again – I haven't a clue." She was feeling a mix of strange and uncomfortable emotions, ones she really did not enjoy dredging up from the past. Injured at being so abandoned, lost at being so oblivious as to who she was, and curious as hell to know anything anyone could give her, especially after finding out about her older sister. But with her voice, she strove to sound and achieve a feeling of aloofness.

"Does that… bother you?" His voice was rather soft and low, his reiatsu gentle as it rolled against hers. She looked up into honest amber eyes as her partner leaned casually against the opened sliding door of the closet she inhabited. His arms crossed over a strong, lean chest clothed in a T-shirt with foreign words doodled across it.

"Why should it?"

"It's _your name_. It's part of your identity." He shrugged the shoulder that wasn't holding him against the door.

"It's what I'm called but it doesn't 'make' me. It's trivial." That last word certainly got his attention. His attention snapped back up to her face. She was pretty sure that the stupid strawberry must have caught the hidden need in her voice, the one she tried in vain to cover with her hard words. Who wouldn't want to have something like their name give them meaning, an answer as to who they are? But of course she thought that it was equally as petty to go looking for it. What need has she of something so irrelevant and silly?

"Do you remember your family name?"

"Kuchiki," she said in that low tone that meant she was laughing at him on the inside. "Did you forget?"

"No! I… I mean… from _before_…" Great, now he felt like a jerk. He shuffled back over to his bed and sat back down, leaning his forearms on his knees as he watched her.

She shifted a bit in her position on the futon, deciding that seiza wasn't the position to be in for discussing such things. She leaned to the side to carry her weight off her feet and propped herself against the shorter wall of the closet, her profile to him. "Nope."

More than anything else she said so far, that one little word stung him. He looked over to his wall above his desk as if studying the paint as he whispered, "You grew up without one…" It was really more of a statement than a question.

"Yup."

"But…" He scratched his head, one eye closing momentarily as he thought through everything flying around in his head. "Renji had a family name." And, after all, he wasn't adopted into a different family to get it.

"He could remember just that much from being alive. He wasn't an infant when he died." She stated matter-of-factly. She couldn't help but ponder why in the hell she hadn't stopped this useless topic of conversation already. She did not plan on sharing this much of her childhood worries with anyone, even herself, let alone let it ruin a perfectly good Sunday full of teasing the substitute shinigami. But she just couldn't bring herself to cut him off. Maybe it was the sympathy in his tone, the interest in his words, the caring in his intentions. Whatever it was, it was equally as mushy and ridiculous as this subject. So why was she still talking?

In his own world, he couldn't help but feel an odd mixture of compassion for her loneliness and anger against the universe for doing it. She never got to live in this world and the sister that died by her side abandoned her almost immediately afterwards, not even leaving her with her own name or a piece of her past. Now she had spent a childhood without a surname, carried an unknown given name, and was adopted into a clan which merely "lent" her their name. Didn't she deserve something for her own, just for being her?

_Rukia_.

Apparently she had had enough though. Another strawberry bounced off his forehead and onto the floor in front of him. His eyes darted up to the smirking nymph before reaching down for the fruit to launch it back into the closet. Before it could make contact with its intended target, however, she jumped down from her perch and let it bounce against the back wall and fall onto the futon.

"Well, I guess you'll be cleaning up one more spot today."

_ AAARGH! _"Who says I'm cleaning the damn futon? You're the one who sleeps in there!"

"You forget, I have another bed I can go to now." And with that, she nonchalantly – and yet, still triumphantly – strolled out of the bedroom with an empty fruit bowl in tote.

It wasn't until that evening, after another rowdy Kurosaki dinner, that Ichigo and Rukia had found another peaceful moment. The sticky strawberry juice from the floor and the closet long cleaned up and forgotten, she lounged back on her spot on the futon in her borrowed yellow, checkered pajamas. Her legs crossed at the knees and one arm underneath her head as she clicked away on her soul pager, checking for anything that would otherwise interrupt the rest of the peaceful evening as he entered the room in his drawstring pajama pants and a plain white T-shirt. He dried his hair with the fluffy towel, letting it linger over his orange tangled mop as he sat back down on his bed.

They continued with their pre-sleep routine that they both knew so well in completely comfortable silence. Each other's company was more reassuring and calming than either would admit aloud. The sounds of an evening breeze coming through his partially ajar window pane and the dim light of the street lights setting a soothing mood as the two friends found respite in the seemingly 'normal' atmosphere.

"Wanna know what 'Rukia' means?" His voice was barely a whisper carried over to her on the air that travelled from behind him and caressed her face.

Violet met amber and they both stopped still. "What?" she whispered back.

"It means," he started softly, a soft and genuine smile playing at the corners of his mouth, "a mysterious, midget girl who stabs you in the chest with a sword –."

"You foo-!" she started to cut him off, indignant at him for ruining the serenity they had waited so long to enjoy.

"– forces you to take over her strange job, requires an exhausting rescue from a death sentence –."

She picked up her nearby manga as a threat that she fully intended on carrying out but he never even paused.

"– and completely changes your life in the biggest way possible. She stops the rain." His eyes hovered over her face for a brief moment, a slight heat playing on his cheeks but not dissuading his words or his open, sincere expression.

"… Ichigo…" Her own face mirroring his faint blush, the hand with the book lowered back down to the mattress and the other had unknowingly clutched itself in a fist against her chest. Whatever passed between them at that moment was a singular, extraordinary feeling that neither could describe. It was warm on the inside, smooth to the touch, and completely unbreakable. They both knew in that instant that their bond was more than a chance meeting, more than a lucky friendship, beyond a useful partnership. It went beyond… well, beyond _something_.

Neither could tell you how long they experienced that moment, how long they sat like that in silence. But it was getting warmer in the room and one of them just had to break the silence before they were thrown headfirst into the next uncharted territory of moments.

"Oh and she can't draw to save her life – OW! _Dammit_, Rukia!"

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><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I hope you enjoyed my random one-shot! I had this story in my head for nearly a week and I just HAD to get out of my work notebooks and into a story before I went crazy! I promise I'm still working on "Our Timing Sucks" as well as its prequel. You just don't understand how this idea was driving me crazy! In fact, I have a handful of cute or funny one-shots. This one turned out a bit longer than I thought it'd be though so I'll let it sit on its own.

It stems from a thought I had about Rukia's life (since she IS my favorite character of all time). Who named her? Would she ever wonder what in the world it means since she's almost literally one of the very few in the series with a name that it's Japanese (and therefore her name sticks out like a sore thumb when written next to others). Also, would her sister, Hisana, have known her birth name and family name? It's worth considering since her sister actually has a Japanese name.

Oh and if it makes anyone feel better, with how much time she's spent being part of the Kuchiki clan and how her relationship with Byakuya has improved dramatically, I think she really and truly thinks of herself as part of that family eventually. 3

**Important Note:** Everything I wrote about Ichigo's name is completely true! Just in case anyone out there is wondering just how accurate it is when they hear it from others.

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><p><em>Kanji<em> – the more elaborate characters in the Japanese writing system. They are derived from Chinese characters and often share a meaning, though not necessarily the same usage or sound.

_Katakana_ – the more 'sharp' and simple of the three character systems in the Japanese language. It is often used to describe sounds (like in manga) and when writing out foreign names and words. Any non-Japanese name would be written with this system.

_Hiragana_ – the third system of characters in the Japanese system is not mentioned in this story but I thought I'd throw it out there for anyone who loves to learn new things to know. I personally love this system way more than katakana because, to me, it's pretty! I wish I could write my name in this system instead.

_Seiza_ – the sitting position wherein both legs are perfectly folded underneath oneself on the floor or a small pillow. Rukia is consistently in this position in the series, most likely from her training in the Kuchiki household than anything else. Google this term because you'll find yourself learning a lot more than you think!

_Reiatsu_ – Bleach terminology for the "spiritual pressure" one has, if they have any at all.

_Ryoka_ – Bleach terminology for an intruder into the Soul Society.


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